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Best Method of Making Hartshorn Jelly

A gelatin dessert made from hartshorn shavings, water, hock, sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Best Method of Making Hartshorn Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil hartshorn shavings in water until it hangs on a spoon like jelly.

  2. Strain the mixture while hot into a saucepan.

  3. Add old hock and powdered sugar.

  4. Beat egg whites to a froth and add the froth to the mixture, then stir well.

  5. Pour between vessels to combine.

  6. Boil for 2-3 minutes.

  7. Add lemon juice.

  8. Boil for another 1-2 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hartshorn shavings
Dissolved gelatine-like substance that sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they help clarify the jelly as they coagulate and are strained out.
Powdered loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that cuts through the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil for 2-3 minutes after adding the froth. Egg white proteins coagulate when heated and trap impurities, so the mixture must reach a boil to clarify. Boiling too little leaves the jelly cloudy; boiling too long can reduce the clear jelly's strength.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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